


Four

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-30
Updated: 2009-04-30
Packaged: 2019-01-19 02:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12401121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: He was a paragon of imperfection. Written for Ficexchange 2008.[Oneshot]





	Four

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

I.

He's mechanic, jigsaw-linked, all semicircles – rough-edged. He's alive, but barely, he thinks. He can feel his veins thrumming with something, but he's not quite sure if he remembers to feel. Can he feel?

He was created this way – monstrous and burning sighs. He knows this because he listens. He can hear everything they say, the shadowy glances and adamant whispers between these people, these, these—he and she, these two-leggers with flimsy legs and pale, pale skin. They seem so familiar; his memory is swimming, awash with silvers of jade, moss and ochre yellow – a wooden cave and odd lavender fur, the lingering scent of rosehips and kind brown eyes...

He's alone, loitering amidst leaves meandering in the air. He doesn't know the words to describe where he is as he sniffs the ground cautiously, but he's nowhere, nowhere, now, _here_. He whimpers a tangle of silver strands, carried upon the burning vermillion west-wind: a howl embraces the air.

 

II.

Sometimes he sees them, able-handed and dishevelled, all feverish-eyed and staring past him – they can see him, can't they? These strange creatures are rough, the similarity between them and him is evident, but they're all clumsy and furless. His scars are vermillion and straight-edged but he knows he's infinite regardless. _They_ don't think so, these creatures – two-leggers, jeering, stones clutched in their chubby fingers. He snarls, lips curled back bravely and teeth glistening in the winter light.

Invisible once more, he's off-limits. They don't touch him anymore, fear wrapped around their pink lips and cheeks, hiding in their extra-fur.

They make him wear things on top of his fur too, when he's not in the dark cave, but he likes it better this way. The dark cave is ripped at its seams, smeared with crusted, brown stains. When he's conscious, sometimes, it's all very red, awash with jewels - thick, heavy, dew-drops burning carmine, scarlet, ruby-orange.

He wonders, briefly, if someone has been around to change all the carpets after he's destroyed them, replaced them with fresh, bright covers. For a second, those jewels were exquisitely entwined and burn as if they were one. It is in that moment that Remus Lupin witnesses the truth, glistening at him as if Niobe herself sang sweetly a song into his ear from her scarlet-stained river of tears.

Red slips from his fingertips, entwined with ennui, and bleeds into the atmosphere. At seven years of age, Remus Lupin is a child no longer.

 

III.

Remus curses. It is not unsurprising, considering the present circumstances – considering the snivelling dog at his feet. It is quite past midnight, and despite the full moon having just passed, he feels quite... _animalistic,_ still.

He'd never been particularly loved. Thus, naturally, when Young Sirius and Young James had arrived on the seen, he'd been naturally distrustful. Over time, having come to...appreciate their finer points, their pixy-dizzying nature, he was enveloped into the fold – teal hair and feathers all over (newfound wings) and all. Of course, this was the hazing of the marauder clan.

A prank, yes, but this – _this_ was unacceptable. Run, slip, and a haze of strange forms with shadow-cloaks and the event fell into place: a perfect trap for a childhood enemy.

That night, he hadn't been able to recall anything but loathing for Snape in his wolf-form, and everyone knows that an angry werewolf is not one you should cross - much like the _Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus_ principle.

The only thing Remus really remembers is the aftermath: " _Trust a Black to recite and enforce the 'necessity' of revenge. Bringing Snivellus to visit the werewolf is perfectly fine, because he'll just be scared shitless and not a night-time snack. It obviously won't have any repercussions and we can all live happily in the Whomping Willow for the rest of our lives with Snivellus as company, because the rest of the world wouldn't want us._ "

He may have been a touch dramatic, but at least Sirius looks even a little bit ashamed.

Remus can envision him smirking in the darkness, with wayward charm and bright eyes. He wants to fling words into the atmosphere, a catapult of characters that compound to make a weapon – something, anything to hurt him. But no, Sirius is _harmless_ , his jokes never hurt _anyone_. Remus feels as if _he's_ the wall and every so often, Sirius reaches with his worldly fingers and scrapes slivers away ever-so-slightly; the damage will never show.

If he chose to be, he'd be a paragon of rage, eyes glaring gasoline lanterns and firelight. He could: he could tear him apart, to see his tendons running, gauche layers – transient, quick-dry; he could tear apart every inch of his shading, his cross-hatched nose and those whimsical cheekbones.

The pain continues, flickering images chaotically splayed across his eyelids. Severus' face, inches from his, the erratic skids of his heart against his chest, fear tangling his features into—

Alone, he agonises over what could have been.

 

IV.

This battle is more than all the others. More, he thinks, in the sense that more have given, have been sacrificed, have martyred, have betrayed, have swung decadent nooses around their own slender necks, have loved and been loved, have....

He could go on forever. He could say that more have killed, yet that's not what interests him the most. It's that red, that certain shade of crimson, merlot-stained shirts and Botticelli paintings – that colour he's glimpsed for the last twenty and next twenty years of his life, that catches him the most.

Blood is purified through blood, he thinks idly. He's overwhelmed by this inherent _knowing_ , that blood had seeped through barren soil in her name previously. He sees blank, strangled faces and all in a row, life's last vestiges sliding along the fragile curves of their necks. He said they'd be white as snow, but they were all scarlet and frayed edges, their mercury-stained sheets of hair silver-spun in the moonlight.

Amongst this sorrow-studded ruin, he was blind to the destruction that surrounded him. He sees everything and nothing; blind to all but feeling.

He laughs, a noise foreign-sounding even to his own ears: harsh, wavering in its pitch like hundreds of glass shards cracking, piercing through sky. He laughed for the oppressed and the free, the homeless and the homed, those opulent few alive with happiness and those lifeless hearts silhouetted with darkness. He laughs because tears would've destroyed him lifetimes ago, in another time, another age, where tears were weakness and with his laughter, he could destroy the self-righteous, the arrogant, with what they thought was his own condescension.

 

He falls forward, collapsing. He sees himself soaring—a rush—wings? The last flees from its pithos; hope blossoms inside him as his ethereal cage evanesces. In this space, he remembers everything, the beginning, vindication, yet he's locked in the oblivion, in a moment where infinity stretches out, ballooning, melding into the deepest night sky...


End file.
